Fata Morgana of a distant rock

A Fata Morgana is something that isn't. Like a mirage, it's a trick of light and atmosphere, usually seen over water, but more elaborate than that. Mountains turn into boats and then majestic castles, then just sort of erode away, so you are not sure which image was real. I don't think I've ever seen one except in a movie. It's one of those sights which likely evoked terror in ancient humans, when no one understood why an entire ship was hanging upside-down fifty feet above the surface of the water. And why that same ship then slowly turned inside-out and sank into the ocean.

In every video of a Fata Morgana I could find, there is a big argument in the comments section about whether it is a Morgana or (in fact) a mirage. I don't care. It's a weird, cool, slightly spooky thing, a thing we can clearly see but which actually doesn't exist in the form we're seeing. Who or what is playing this eerie trick of distortion on our eyes and brain?


I use this video not so much because it's a good example (though it is that), but because of the beautiful noise of the surf, the utter lack of captions, and the beach-dwellers casually romping while the bizarre illusion plays out in the distance. The gifs were just lying around in my file, left over from another post.

  

  

Trolls I'm gonna get!

I love trolls, and I have no money. Therefore I have to rely on "lots" - bundles of trolls sold for  a single price, usually through Etsy or eBay.  My greatest haul was four trolls with immaculate outfits - two forest trolls, which I didn't have, a Russ troll and a Treasure Troll. 

OK, I have officially gone mad.

I needed something, rather desperately, now that the grandkids are older, teenagers who don't even want to talk to me any more. It left an awful hole. I miss all those projects, knitting, making stuff for their birthdays and Christmas. Now they want money, basically. But making stuff is in my blood, I guess, though this whole thing is adding up, getting sort of expensive. The three I just ordered were only about $15 American, but with all the added charges it came to $38.00 - and that was a good buy.

As I said a couple of posts ago, and forgot all about, I tried Facebook pages for troll collectors, and it's like the doll world: hard to penetrate because of the in-talk, the jargon, and the expectation that you will turn around and sell your next precious "find" to the highest bidder. I've made new hair out of yarn for a lot of my Dollarinas (dollar store trolls) -  some find it strange, I know, but I think it has turned out well. I go ahead and post my photos anyway, knowing I'll look like an amateur. But I don't know why human beings have to do this, inject prestige and arcane knowledge into the mix. 

Example. Someone told another person she had gotten her troll outfit from "BAB". Now, would YOU know what "BAB" was? Neither did I. Neither did the person who asked! Turned out to be Build-a-Bear, but the person just "assumed" everyone would know what she meant. I can't help but feel it was done to assert authority and make the other person feel diminished, put in her place, on the outside looking in.

These are not photos, but SCANS of trolls I made quite a long time ago, with the few trolls I had kicking around. I find them quite interesting, but they're not going on my Facebook page.

Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin's been eaten by bears!

I find it interesting, if not fascinating (now that I think about it, which I never have before because the poem seemed so soppy) that Christopher Robin is praying for the same reason anybody else prays.

Fear.

It's interesting too just what he is afraid of, as is made evident in the second poem. 

Bears.

Why would A. A. Milne choose bears?

It seems obvious when you look at it. In putting his own small son at the centre of stories which made him wildly world-famous, he was throwing him to the bears, if not the wolves. 

Never mind that his Winnie the Pooh was a "silly old bear", a "bear of very little brain". He was still a bear. The "Lines and Squares" poem refers to them as "masses of bears", one of the most disturbing images I've read in a long time.

It's well-known that Christopher Robin Milne was relentlessly bullied in school for his fringe-haired Edwardian alter ego. In all the photos of him clutching his famous bear, he looks unutterably sad, even frightened. It's also been said that his appearance was altered to make him look more like the innocent Ernest Shepard illustrations, instead of the other way around. Get out the scissors, trim up that fringe! Think how that must have played out as he grew up and left tender childhood behind.

Why do people use their children that way? The same reason anyone uses anyone, I guess. Selfishness, ego, human ruthlessness, narcissistic disregard for the wellbeing of one's nearest and dearest. And in the case of writers, a single-minded and overwhelming desire to be famous.

To me, the most chilling lines in that whole chilling poem are:

"Mine has a hood, and I lie in bed

And I pull the hood right over my head

And I shut my eyes, and I curl up small,

And nobody knows that I'm there at all.

This sounds like someone who is hiding. Hiding from what? Bears, the boogeyman, God? His own father? Or is it from the fictional Christopher Robin, a menace so inescapable that he can't get away from him even in the safety of his own bed?

Don't stop now. . .

                      Oh yessssssssss.

Bonomo Turkish Taffy Song

Give it a smack (Bonomo)
Give it a crack (Bonomo)
Then lift up the flap, strip off the wrap
And hey, away we go!

We're gonna taste Turkish Taffy
Hey, it's delish!
Taste Turkish Taffy
Answers every wish

One, nice and chewy
Two, nice and sweet
Three in the flavour that you prefer
It truly can't be beat

But you get chocolate, vanilla
Strawberry too
Even banana, doodle-oodle-oo
When you take a trip to your candy store
Be sure to get you some
Turkish Taffy, yum-yum-yum!

You spell it

B-O

N-O

M-O

BONOMO

Oh-oh-oh, Bonomo!

(Hey, one more time!)

You spell it

B-O

N-O

M-O

BONOMO

Oh-oh-oh, Bonomo

TURKISH TAFFY!

Blogger's apology. All the different colours were a vain attempt to demonstrate/pictorialize the various flavors: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry too; even banana, doodle-oodle-oo.

Satanic meanings in Pebbles and Bamm Bamm's Let the Sunshine In

Mommy told me something
A little kid should know
It's all about the devil
And I've learned to hate him so

She said he causes trouble
When you let him in the room
He will never never leave you
If your heart is filled with gloom

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Smilers never lose
And frowners never win

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Open up your heart
And let the sunshine in

When you are unhappy
The devil wears a grin
But how he starts to runnin'
when the light comes pourin' in

I know he'll be unhappy
Cause I'll never wear a frown
Maybe if we keep on smiling
He'll get tired of hanging round

If I forget to say my prayers
The devil jumps with glee
But he feels so awful awful
When he sees me on my knees

So if you're full of trouble
And you never seem to win
Just open up your heart
And let the sunshine in

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Smilers never lose
And frowners never win

So let the sunshine in
Face it with a grin
Open up your heart
And let the sunshine in

LET THE SUNSHINE IN!

Blogger's attempt at explanation. Like everyone who watched The Flintstones (and everyone did, though its sappiness now astounds me), I remember this saccharine little duo with Pebbles and Bamm Bamm. The fact both of them were maybe eight months old and incapable of speech made no difference. There they were, suddenly sitting upright and performing this cheery little song, and to my ears then, that's all it was: a sappy little number sung by two sped-up chipmunk voices.

When I first discovered the words on YouTube, I was disbelieving. It couldn't be about the devil, could it? So I looked it up on Wikipedia, and to my astonishment, there it was:

"The most famous recording of this song was created for baby-boomers and featured Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm on The Flintstones "No Biz Like Show Biz" episode (which originally aired September 17, 1965). The clip of them performing this song was sometimes played during the closing credits in the show's final season (1965–1966), this episode being the opener of that season. Although Pebbles and Bamm Bamm went on to form a rock band as teenagers in the 1970s, they never approached the classic heights of their early childhood tune. The Flintstones version of the song was not stripped of its religious lyrics for inclusion in the show, and only the word "kids" was substituted. Original vocals were provided by Rebecca Page (as Pebbles) and her mother Ricky Page (as Bamm Bamm), who later became "The Bermudas" and then "The Majorettes". 

OK. So where exactly did this bizarre little ditty come from?

The first recording was called Open Up Your Heart and was performed by the Cowboy Church Sunday School (and don't ask me to tell you what THAT was). It was the sort of quasi-Christian song that was popular back then. I remember a lot of kids' TV shows ended with the host saying, "And remember, kids. . . always say your prayers." Prayers usually meant kneeling beside your bed with hands together, saying something like, "Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep./If I should die before I wake/I pray the Lord my soul to take."

Such a pleasant thing to recite before sinking into sleep, the possibility of death! No one seemed to think of these things and the effect they would have on children emotionally and spiritually. The whole thing was based on fear. Bland white Christianity was applied across the board in the culture as something which went without saying, and I remember everyone reciting the Lord's Prayer at the start of the school day.

But this little song is a lot more extreme.

Two little cartoon kids singing about "the devil" is extremely creepy, even if the song is already known in the popular culture. There are still parts of the world - hell, parts of MY world, not just the Southern U. S. - where this sort of philosophy would not be at all out of line. It seems to me it's meant to scare the hell out of kids, or at least force them to look cheerful all the time for fear of  Satanic reprisal. A very strange idea indeed.

Just a little piece of art I did

Canuck the Crow is a daddy!

I don't seem to have time to set this up much, but it's self-explanatory, I think. My daughter Shannon is the reporter. I was being all envious about her being able to meet the local legend, when she told me, "Canuck BIT me!" I think  she was trying her best, but the bird didn't like her body language. She stroked him tentatively, and tentative just doesn't work with a stud crow. You've got to scratch behind the head, like the guy they showed before. Extending your forearm helps, as it gives the bird something to land on. Hey, it's been a while, and I am a cat person now, but I will never forget that I loved birds, and had them in my home. There's a bird-shaped space in my heart, which is what drives me on my video searches around the lakes and seaside paths of Coquitlam.

The worst ad in television history

This thing is just unbelievably primitive, from the screechy adult-pretending-to-be-a-kid to the brain-dead-sounding Dad, and graphics that look like they were cut out with garden shears. But Colorforms were what we all played with, and nobody complained. 

The Six Million Dollar Troll

VHTF 3.5" VTG DAM TAILED TROLL W/SWIVEL HEAD, NEW SALT & PEPPER HAIR

Item Information
Condition:
Used

“He is in great shape for being almost 50 yrs old”

History:
2 offers

Price:
US $1,499.99
+US $60.00 shipping 

Approximately C $1,920.59 (including shipping)

BLOGGER'S LAMENT: I've had some doubts about getting back into trolls. What started as a happy thing ended up with joining Facebook groups in which people display collections of hundreds or even thousands of expensive, vintage trolls, or trolls they just happened to pick up at a flea market (a couple hundred, usually) that just happen to include several treasures like the phenomenal find pictured above.

Like, a two thousand-dollar troll! It's nice, for sure. He's cute. Looks in great shape, maybe even mint, as if someone bought him and just put him away somewhere back in 1961. But I just don't have two thousand dollars for a troll! I have to eat.

I started off enjoying my troll hobby, and I still do, to some extent, but the experts are ruining it. I posted some photos on Facebook of troll clothes I knitted, and hair I've replaced, and I can feel the shock and disdain - shock that I'd have the nerve to even do such a thing when the standards are too high for me to reach, disdain because I'm a newbie and have to sit back for at least two years before contributing anything at all.

My thing was making yarn hair that doesn't look like yarn, or is at least pretty enough to fool the eye (or *I* thought so):

These seemed OK to me until I posted some, and the comment was, "It looks like yarn". Yarn isn't used on trolls. Tibetan cashmere, perhaps - mohair from the pelt of a yak, fleece from the Golden Ram of Jason and the Argonauts - but not yarn. Yarn is for an old Raggedy Ann doll left moldering in the attic. It seems there are certain rules as to what you can use. Which is funny, because I've seen things like steel wool, wires, shells, fake flowers, quartz crystals, snow globes, and other unlikely substances for hair replacement. But don't use yarn because it's for amateurs and grandmas, because it means you don't know what you're doing, and even if you're doing it for fun and just to share with the group and not try to sell or trade, there is a certain standard to be maintained.

The group "in-talks" a lot, meaning a lot of obscure troll jargon. WHY do people do this, in any and every field of endeavour? It's to make people who know less than they do feel like know-nothings, or to show off JUST HOW MUCH MORE they know about the subject than you do. So you are suddenly in the position of supplicant, of meekly asking questions and waiting for the Big Oom-pahs to answer rather than joining the conversation and actually saying anything.

I'd say the internet has poisoned everything, but maybe not, maybe it has always been this way. Sashaying around, ass-wagging and showing off seems to be intrinsic to human nature, and it stinks. I am SICK of it. OK, it looks like yarn, but is THIS any better?

This is what troll hair is s'posed-ta look like, not long waterfalls of de-stranded yarn fibres. But they're not collecting MY trolls, are they? Aren't they interested in what I like? I don't know.

I guess this is a whole lot of complaining, but it just galls me that the "does not belong" stamp that was placed on my forehead at birth is still so much in evidence. Even when having Fun with Trolls. The hidden agenda in these groups is that you have to be a professional doll-collector/restorer who knows and uses all the jargon, in spite of repeated insistence that it's "just for fun". I even read someone say that they think more members should contribute and get involved, rather than just sit back to be entertained. 

(I can't remember if I posted this already, so here it is again, or still).

Some days feel like this

Triggered: why do I have this gun to my head?

I have been sitting here for hours, or perhaps months or years, trying to make point form order out of a seething ocean. And I know it's not going to work.

I was pretty surprised, when I finally sat down to make "the list", that I had already done so. The file even had the same name, though it was created last year. I have no memory at all of making it, but it was for a post just like this one, which at the last minute I deleted.

I don't quite know what it is - perhaps the need to vomit up the toxins of years of sexual abuse, triggered by the MeToo movement which has aroused more dragons than it has slain. But I know my dragon. The abuse went on for years, and the stage, the set, the backdrop of it, the theatre in which it was played out, was in the hands of (in the words of Baby Jane Hudson) my very own sister! 

Pat was always just there - much older than me (13 years), flamboyant, brilliantly histrionic - her followers, her ubiquitous coterie of admirers, thought so anyway - and smart, but in a way that could go straight to the jugular. She  felt entitled to say anything she wanted and was shocked if you objected ("whaaaaaat?"), and never apologized. And I was infantilized, except when it came to her pimping me out at her parties, being fully aware that I was drunk and being groped by numerous married men. At age 15, I was the mascot, passed around with impunity. Fair game.

I can only hit the highlights, or lowlights, of the grinding game of her presence in my life. There were some favorite sayings (sort of like the sayings of Jesus - or she may have thought so):

“Margaret, you’re weird.”

“Margaret, you’re wired.”

“Margaret, you’re crazy.” Usually said with a cocked eyebrow and a cool little shrug of contempt.

High points of my life were marked with high sarcasm. When I got married to a man I loved, she had this to say at the reception:

"Well, I guess now you think you've got your whole life figured out."

When I was juggling two toddlers during a visit, she watched me, not helping out at all, then said with the expression of someone imagining someone's terminal disease, "Sometimes I try to imagine what your days are like."

Oh, it goes on, and it WILL become a litany and a list if I don't watch out. When I played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady for a community theatre group, she honored me by attending. Afterwards, backstage, she stood apart, saying nothing, while everyone else jumped around me like puppies and my husband wept with pride. Finally when I looked at her with an agonized, "Please, can't you say SOMETHING?" expression, she arched her cool little eyebrow and said in a cool little voice, 

"You weren't boring."

So I wasn't boring. I wasn't awful! Good to know. The weird thing is, I was supposed to be OK with the remark, even grateful for her assessment. Over the next several days of her visit, she minutely dissected my voice and all its flaws (she had tossed away a singing career with too much booze and sex. No  kidding). Not boring, but obviously pretty terrible, and I think she was incredulous I had the nerve to get up there at all.

I just deleted a huge chunk of this, because we haven't gotten to the abusive part yet. (Oh, let's put this one in! I made the mistake of saying I was taking clarinet lessons, and she said, "Are you going to tap dance at the same time?")

Other ripe cherries were spat, but you have the idea by now. When I told her I was anxious about moving to Vancouver and wasn't sure what would happen, she bored into my eyes and calmly said, "I guess you'll just self-destruct."

OK, that's enough, now we have to get to the "real" stuff, and the reason she keeps pouring back into my brain like a landslide of hot rocks. When I was 15 or so, I was shy, chubby, not very attractive, but Pat would let me come to her parties. Her parties were piss-ups full of married men and loud falling-down-drunk women. They were up-against-the-wall affairs, and I was expected to think it was a privilege to go to them.

When I first encountered the expression "Walpurgis night", I immediately knew what it meant. Barely getting to the bathroom in time to barf was all part of the proceedings, as was feeling an alien penis grind against my bottom in the dark. I was supposed to like it, and the horrible, horrible thing is that I DID like it, or some of it. Once, her boy friend's best friend (in his 30s and married) started "dating" me, taking me to movies and such. Things were getting out of hand with him. When I finally went to my Big Sister and told her I was frightened of what was happening with him, she said, and I quote, "It doesn't hurt to have a little smooch and a snuggle after a date."

Pimped me out, she did. I never had a term for it before, but now I know. Her own drinking habits were legendary at that time, so she felt I should mirror them. I learned the lesson too well, had to join AA in my mid-30s, and horrified the entire family (especially Pat, who said "I'm just so thankful it never happened to me").

I would say she was not a happy woman, and she wasn't, but neither was she unhappy, for there was just something missing in her. She did not have a fully-formed conscience, and was completely incapable of real intimacy with another human being. She could slash and burn, oh yes, and she did, many times. She collected exotic and intriguing men like pelts, including an indigenous Mohawk man named Clare Brant who went on to become a much-revered psychiatrist on a reserve. That engagement didn't last too long, for on one of her many trips to Germany she got pregnant (by which boy friend is unknown). I have seldom heard of such a jaw-dropping act of betrayal. But on she went, a human wood-chipper, on to the next engagement, another man to "process" and spit out.

There were other betrayals, horrible ones, such as the time I trusted her with some very sensitive information about my father and what he had done to me as a child. She immediately called my parents, blurted out the whole thing, and started a World War III which only ended when my parents were put under the ground.

But it is all so odd. SHE is so odd, but so arrogant that she somehow twists it around and accuses everyone else of being odd, or sick, or crazy. When I began to read and hear about narcissism, her astonishing behaviour began to make sense, the coterie of quasi-friends, the continual gaslighting. But so many pieces still don't fit.

What I have always wondered:

Why Germany? Why was she so obsessed with it? Who would be attracted to that place, less than twenty years after the war? Why Munich (given its dark political significance)? Why did she come back pregnant when she was about to get married to a man she supposedly loved? Did she know who the father was? Why Germany at all? No one in the family had the slightest connection to it. What was all that political radicalism all about, why did she seem to think the wrong side had won? Why did she cultivate certain key people and collect them like trophies? What was that supposed to do for her self-worth?

I had hoped to fashion this into something other than a rant, but it's broken pieces, and you can't put a broken heart or a broken brain back together. It's too late for that. I want to let this whole thing go, and I don't know how to do it. Incredibly, in her late 70s, she still hasn't run out of admirers that she can whip around her little finger. I've found pictures of her with her Thomas Merton Society, and she still looks like the favored child. Merton is just about the creepiest figure who ever lived, a monk who broke his vows and had a selfish affair with a woman engaged to be married to someone fighting in Vietnam. Is there an echo in here? Do engagements mean nothing at all? What about morals? Isn't it also true Merton fathered a child out of wedlock and pretended it didn't exist? Infants who carry your DNA are bad PR, apparently, and disposable (as she must have known).

Such a hero. But I can see why she loves him.

Whenever I write something like this, I delete it and go back to the quirky stuff I usually post. I do enjoy that stuff, but what about the poison in my guts, do I just carry it? What is being a writer all about? Not about this, evidently. The one time I really poured it all out like lava, three long-term followers bailed in quick succession. Let's go back to the funny, weird gifs of silicone babies, shall we? So I don't know. 

My mother once said about Pat (and seldom did she divulge anything so personal, as she was mostly indifferent to me), "She's just talking about herself." Mum also had an older sister, unmarried, flamboyant, often cruel, who had gone through men like water. In her later life her drinking went out of control, and eventually she committed suicide. She wasn't found until weeks or months later because nobody missed her, and my parents had to go to New York to bury her because there was nobody else to do it.

I don't say it will happen, but if she does die alone, I think I will give about as much of a rip as she always has about me: no more, no less.  It may be the only possible way that I can bury her.

THE KICKER. There had to be a chaser! I had been so shut out of my family that I didn't even receive notice of my parents' deaths. For some reason, one day I began to look for my mother's obituary online and found it. Read the thing through. Read it again. It was interesting reading, because there was a hole in it. My name wasn't on it! According to my mother, or likely Pat who was entrusted to write such things, not  only was I shut out of the  family and ostracized: I had never been born. It was the strangest thing. 

But I knew in my heart that NOTHING my children could do would cause me to do such a jackassed, lame-assed, plain stupid thing. My kids could be axe-murderers, they could kill ME with an axe, and of course they would be in my obituary. It's called having a sense of reality.

So you see, those forces of darkness did not win, after all. But how I wish, how devoutly I wish I could just kill her off.

Colonel Sanders and the lie detector test

I don't remember anything about this commercial. I DO remember TV ads with the Colonel in them. He was the company, in a way, and without his jovial presence the product would have landed with a thud.

But this ad wasn't his sort of thing, it wasn't. It's kind of surreal, or at least weird and menacing. They're trying to torture the good Colonel into giving away his Secret Recipe of Eleven Herbs and Spices (two of which are salt and pepper). 

It seems to me KFC (as it's called now, no doubt to get rid of that dreaded word "fried", even though the recipe is pretty much the same) used to taste pretty good, and it seems to me that now, what with all the improvements over the years, it tastes pretty dreadful. It isn't just the taste but the rubbery texture, the grease spurting every time you bite into it. The relative tastelessness. No doubt in the old days, they used real chickens, the kind that cluck and scratch and run around in a pen. Now they use rubbery chicken machines, clones or hybrids crossed with vulcanized rubber, their breasts so overinflated they fall over and can't walk any more.

Chickens which don't even know what the light of day is.

Another thing. It's hard to even GET any KFC now when you go to the takeout counter. Actual chicken is relegated to one item on the menu at the very bottom. Everything else is wraps and quesadillas and nuggets and whatever-else (who looks? I want CHICKEN). If you do order chicken, and they always look at you strangely if you do, you wait a very long time, and then all you get is (as they call it) "brown meat". You can't get white meat unless you pay extra, and sometimes it isn't available at all. I wish I knew what happened to it.

There have been a number of people "playing" Col. Sanders in ads recently, and they're all idiots. The design on the "bucket" (read: sign, as they don't do buckets any more) is now more jolly-looking, though Col. Sanders never looked like that. He was a crabby old man, and people liked him that way. He had a unique method of quality control, and it was most innovative, not to mention very effective. He travelled around the country, randomly dropping in to Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants and ordering a bucket of chicken, which he would go through methodically piece by piece and analyze for this quality or that. Then he would eat it. His favorite was the top of the wing, and I have to agree with him there.

The RackTrap - As Seen on TV

I watched this video in disbelief, and then I watched it again (in disbelief). What's weird about it is that I can't find reference to this product anywhere else. Anywhere. I took Google by the heels and turned it upside-down and shook it, and nothing came out - and that almost never happens. So, like Perfect Polly the chirping plastic parrot and that stuffed laughing hyena thing, this looks like an idea that went straight down the sewer without a detour.

"The Rack Trap" itself is the wrong name. It's just. . . wrong. The whole product is "off", in that it's something that just could not work, period, but to call it The Rack Trap. . . what does it mean? I saw a couple of other things with that name on YouTube, but they had to do with deer antlers. You know. . . a rack.

I'm well aware "rack" can be used as slang for a woman's breasts, but it's kind of obscure. You're more likely to hear "boobs", "tits", or the more genteel "girls". "Rack" has the wrong sound to it - you should get some semblance of the product's purpose from its name. "Trap" means - what? It can mean a, well, a trap, but what else? 

This is, in case you don't want to sit through a pretty excruciating video, a little flat purse you stick in your bra. That's right. It has a zipper in it. There is a list of all the things you can "hide" in this little flat purse:

Money
Credit Cards
Bandaid
Mints
Gum
License
Tissues
Bus Pass
Flash Drive 
MP3  Player
Gym Card
Condoms
Business Card

In the video, there's no looking down your neckline and fishing around to find the top of your bra cup and sliding the "trap" in and jiggling it around to get it in the right place. The lady sort of slaps it on her chest, and that's it. It looks as if she isn't even wearing a bra, which would be kind of silly because then The Rack Trap would just fall on the floor.

Maybe it's like Snoopy's dog house or something, or a clown car, where you can't believe how much can fit in such a small space. More likely, if this is anything like even the most miniaturized version of a woman's purse, stuff would accumulate, makeup and keys and tampons and mirrors and sunscreen and earrings and hair scrunchies and press-on nails and - you get it, by now. 

It would be like trying to fit a bumpy baseball in your bra cup. Oh, great. Such a smart look! "Jesus, what's that lumpy thing under your shirt?" Soon it would weigh 20 pounds or more. And trying to get stuff out of it in public? Are you kidding? Here she is, head bent (in a dark restaurant, say), rummaging around in there, unable to find it, losing it down her front and having to lift up the bottom of her blouse to retrieve it . . . It's not a good look.

I think it's deliberate that the women in the ad are wearing thin, clingy fabrics instead of thick sweaters. The Rack Trap is supposed to just sort of melt into your body, I guess, so it doesn't show through silk or sheer tank tops. It does appear to vanish when the women slap it against their chests, but I just can't see it happening that way. When they pull them out, they do it so fast you can hardly follow it. It seems to just come out of the thin air, as if there's some sort of photographic trick going on.

I wonder who they hire for these infomercials, who they get to effuse and enthuse about this stuff. I am sure for the most part they haven't used the product, which gives those testimonials their hilariously fake quality. "It doesn't even show!" one woman cries, the assumption being that it certainly WOULD show, like any fat little zippered thing you crammed in your brassiere.

AFTER-THE-THOUGHT: One more thing that bothers me. Doesn't it sound like they're saying "rat trap"? Rat trap, rat trap, rat trap. The more I watch it, the more it sounds like that.

I AM A MIGHTY BATTLE SHIP by David West

After a long period of illness and near-incapacitation, David astounded me with one of his best poems, written only last night. He gave me permission to share it here. I am so hoping this will ignite more poems, as he has a unique voice, and is my closest friend.

I AM A MIGHTY BATTLE SHIP

YES. A mighty battle ship
Grey
Taken a lot of hits and near misses
Done some damage in return

My rudder cable is jammed
I travel by digression

Bunker oil marks my path
We are working to seal the leaks

It is a race against time
And tide

Two forward compartments
Are sealed by my order
Were filling with flood and screams of those left behind

I have counter-flooded to keep
The decks even at a level
No dramatic going down here

Yet there is no homecoming for us
No homeport to take refuge
and refit

Sooner or later we go under the cold dark waves
I’ll stand my watch,
I’ll not fear
For many before us have gone down
to meet the Old Grey Widow Maker

Constant as ocean, wind,
and tide

—David West

Turtle magic